19 February 2006

Here's an early treat: Monday's Spurgeon post on Sunday afternoon. Be sure to read the brief items at the end of the post.

The following excerpt is from a sermon titled "Encourage Your Minister," preached by Charles Spurgeon on Sunday Morning, October 18th, 1863, at Cornwall Road Chapel, Bayswater, where his brother, James Spurgeon (not to be confused with the famous blogger) was pastor at the time.

Encourage Your Minister

If you do not encourage your minister, your minister will probably sink down in despair. Remember that the man himself needs encouragement, because he is weak. Who is sufficient for these things?

To serve in any part of the spiritual army is dangerous, but to be a captain is to be doubly exposed. The most of the shots are aimed at the officers. If Satan can find a flaw in our character, then it will be, "Publish it, publish it, publish it!" If he can lead us to keep back a doctrine or go amiss in practice, or wander in experience, he is glad enough. How delighted is the devil to break the vessels of mercy.

Pray for the poor man, whom you expose to perish if you do not preserve him by supplication. If there were a ship at sea stranded and broken on the rocks, and someone volunteered to carry a rope to the sinking crew, you, standing on the shore, could do no more, methinks you could not do less, than cry, "O God! help him to bear the rope to that wrecked ship."

Pray for the minister and encourage him, for there are plenty to discourage him. There are always carping spirits abroad who will remind him of any fault; he will be afflicted by those dastards who will not dare to sign their names to a letter, but send it to him anonymously; and then there is the devil, who, the moment the man has got out of the pulpit, will say, "There is a poor sermon! You will never dare to preach again."

After he has been preaching for weeks there will come a suggestion, "You are not in your proper sphere of labor." There are all sorts of discouragements to be met with. Professing Christians will backslide. Those who do remain will often be inconsistent, and he will be sighing and crying in his closet, while you, perhaps, are thanking God that your souls have been fed under him.

Encourage your minister, I pray you, wherever you attendencourage him for your own sake. A discouraged minister is a serious burden upon the congregation. When the fountain gets out of order, you cannot expect to find water at any of the taps; and if the minister be not right, it is something like a steam engine in a great manufactoryeverybody's loom is idle when the motive-power is out of order.

See that he is resting upon God and receiving his divine power, and you will all know, each Sabbath day, the benefit of it. This is the least thing you can do. There are many other things which may cause you expense, effort, time, but to encourage the minister is so easy, so simple a matter, that I may well press upon you to do it.

Two Other Miscellaneous Notices

A word about :

If you're wondering whether I have abandoned my other websites, fear not. The sites have always been hosted on servers at Grace to You, but I try to maintain them in my spare time. Because of increasingly stringent security requirements, it became impossible for me to upload files by FTP from my Earthlink account. I've maintained the websites in my spare time at the office for the past five years or so, and the amount of time I can devote to that task has steadily diminished. For the past month, because of a glitch in my FTP client, I've been unable to make any uploads at all. The tech wizards at Grace to You are in the process of moving my websites to independent servers, which will enable me to upload from anywhere. I already have a dozen or so new Spurgeon sermons ready for upload. And I have a lot of updating that needs to be done to my controversial bookmarks. Bear with me.

Next week is the Shepherds' Conference at Grace Church. Between now and then, I need to finish my preparation for five seminars, so don't look for me to be blogging much until after the conference is over. The other Pyros will have to carry the load. If you're coming to the conference, look me up and ask for a free copy of one of the original world-famous color-fast premium-vinyl PyroManiac bumper stickers. I have about 40 left, and I'll give them out one at a time as long as they last. I'm trying to get some stickers with the brand-new fiery PyroManiacs logo, but I don't know if they'll be ready in time for the conference. If so, I'll try to have some of those handy to give away, too.

Thank you for that timely reminder to pray for our pastors. The more a man of God is faithful to preach the Word in season and out, the more Satan desires to attack and discredit his ministry--all the more reason to lift up our pastors in constant prayer!

Coming to the Shepherds' Conference? Stop by the Choir Room and say hello! ;-)

"I will give you pastors according to Mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding." Jer. 3:15

Thank You Father for each and every pastor You have blessed Your people with to teach us Your Word of grace, and to be examples for us. Dear Heavenly Father, keep these precious gifts to the Church safe from the subtle lies of Satan, and protect them from discouragement, and fill them with Your joy, for the glory of Your holy name. Amen.

For the other readers, by the way, the glossy plastic stickers Phil has are nice, but we happen to have glossy stickers at the TeamPyro Pawn Shop. Phil's sticker are die-cut, so they have a very posh look, but the ones at the TeamPyro Pawn Shop can be trimmed to look about as good, especially when you stick it to a window or a wall.

And you can have one right away -- or you could upgrade to a T-Shirt or a mug or a BBQ Apron. Listen: this stuff is not like Jesus Junque which abuses Scripture to make a buck. This is fanware. People go to St. Thomas or Can Cun and buy the t-sirt for about this price -- you come here every day, and it's onlyright that you buy the t-shirt to tell everyone what impacts your daily productivity.

Phil,I've only been in FT vocational ministry for 8 months and can say AMEN to Spurgeon's sermon. It is so much easier to tear down then to build up. Thanks for the timely reminder/encouragement from Spurg.

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